How does Power Attack actually interact with weapon potency runes?

[Colette Brunel]

How does Power Attack actually interacts with weapon potency runes? At first, I was sure that it added even the extra damage from weapon potency runes, but now that I look at the wording again, I am not so sure.

How does it work?

Also, Power Attack explicitly has you make a melee Strike. Thus, it is bizarrely a class feat that is a melee Strike, but lacks the Attack tag, no?

[Zaister]

What is not clear about "You deal an extra weapon damage die. If you’re at least a 10th-level fighter, you deal two extra weapon damage dice." and "on a successful attack roll, the weapon deals an additional number of weapon damage dice equal to the potency value"?

[Voss]

Yep. Power attack adds 1 die. 2 if 10th level or higher. It neatly avoids any issues.

It's also not particularly impressive at higher levels. Still useful, but... I suspect the damage curve falls off.

[Colette Brunel]

Voss wrote:

Yep. Power attack adds 1 die. 2 if 10th level or higher. It neatly avoids any issues.

It's also not particularly impressive at higher levels. Still useful, but... I suspect the damage curve falls off.

In that case, it does not look like barbarians and paladins want to rely on Power Attack at all.

If Power Attack fails to multiply the extra damage dice, then:
Barbarians want neither Double Slice nor Power Attack.
Fighters want a two-handed weapon and Furious Focus and Sudden Charge (or possibly both with the human's Natural Ambition).
Paladins want neither Double Slice nor Power Attack.
Rangers want neither Double Slice nor Power Attack.
Rogues want to multiclass into fighter for Double Slice.
Does this seem about right?

[willuwontu]

Power attack muliplies them.

Page 179 wrote:

COUNTING WEAPON DAMAGE DICE

Effects based on a weapon’s number of damage dice (such as charge or forceful) include only the weapon’s damage die plus any extra dice for a magic weapon. They don’t count additional dice from abilities, critical specialization effects, property runes, weapon traits, or the like. On a critical hit, you double this bonus only once; you don’t double it again due to the number of damage dice increasing.

It needs better wording though.

[Voss]

willuwontu wrote:

Power attack muliplies them.

Page 179 wrote:

COUNTING WEAPON DAMAGE DICE

Effects based on a weapon’s number of damage dice (such as charge or forceful) include only the weapon’s damage die plus any extra dice for a magic weapon. They don’t count additional dice from abilities, critical specialization effects, property runes, weapon traits, or the like. On a critical hit, you double this bonus only once; you don’t double it again due to the number of damage dice increasing.

It needs better wording though.

Multiplies...what?

Power attack doesn't multiply anything.

The text you're quoting is for the charge property on a lance, or the forceful property from scimitars and greataxes. Those properties give you +x damage, where x is the number of damage dice (almost always 1+however many dice the weapon potency rune gives you). If you crit with one of these weapons it does 2x, not 2x+y if it is also deadly. And specifically says it doesn't count additional dice from abilities (ie, power attack)

Colette Brunel wrote:

Voss wrote:

Yep. Power attack adds 1 die. 2 if 10th level or higher. It neatly avoids any issues.

It's also not particularly impressive at higher levels. Still useful, but... I suspect the damage curve falls off.

In that case, it does not look like barbarians and paladins want to rely on Power Attack at all.

If Power Attack fails to multiply the extra damage dice, then:
Barbarians want neither Double Slice nor Power Attack.
Fighters want a two-handed weapon and Furious Focus and Sudden Charge (or possibly both with the human's Natural Ambition).
Paladins want neither Double Slice nor Power Attack.
Rangers want neither Double Slice nor Power Attack.
Rogues want to multiclass into fighter for Double Slice.
Does this seem about right?

No.

Have you done the math on... any of that?

[Texas Snyper]

Voss wrote:

willuwontu wrote:

Power attack muliplies them.

Page 179 wrote:

COUNTING WEAPON DAMAGE DICE

Effects based on a weapon’s number of damage dice (such as charge or forceful) include only the weapon’s damage die plus any extra dice for a magic weapon. They don’t count additional dice from abilities, critical specialization effects, property runes, weapon traits, or the like. On a critical hit, you double this bonus only once; you don’t double it again due to the number of damage dice increasing.

It needs better wording though.

Multiplies...what?

Power attack doesn't multiply anything.

The text you're quoting is for the charge property on a lance, or the forceful property from scimitars and greataxes. Those properties give you +x damage, where x is the number of damage dice (almost always 1+however many dice the weapon potency rune gives you). If you crit with one of these weapons it does 2x, not 2x+y if it is also deadly.

Colette Brunel wrote:

Voss wrote:

Yep. Power attack adds 1 die. 2 if 10th level or higher. It neatly avoids any issues.

It's also not particularly impressive at higher levels. Still useful, but... I suspect the damage curve falls off.

In that case, it does not look like barbarians and paladins want to rely on Power Attack at all.

If Power Attack fails to multiply the extra damage dice, then:
Barbarians want neither Double Slice nor Power Attack.
Fighters want a two-handed weapon and Furious Focus and Sudden Charge (or possibly both with the human's Natural Ambition).
Paladins want neither Double Slice nor Power Attack.
Rangers want neither Double Slice nor Power Attack.
Rogues want to multiclass into fighter for Double Slice.
Does this seem about right?

No.

Have you done the math on... any of that?

Effects based on a weapon’s number of damage dice (such as charge or forceful) include only the weapon’s damage die plus any extra dice for a magic weapon.

Power attack looks at your weapon die. This explicitly says potency increases your weapon die. "Add one weapon die" = (weapon+potency)[base] +(weapon+potency)[power attack] + (IF 10+ then: (weapon+potency))[power attack scale]

[Quadratic W]

That's not at all what the rules say.

https://vgy.me/C48Gg4.png

It says it adds weapon dice, not "increases your weapon die". And increasing your weapon die by adding more dice would be more than a bit counter-intuitive.

Note that even with a 1d12 weapon, you're going to be better off making a normal attack followed up by a -5 attack in nearly every situation, since not only do you lower the chance of overkill, you DEAL MORE DAMAGE ON AVERAGE.

The only niche use of power attack is when you're stuck attacking an enemy resistant to your damage type, where dealing a bunch of damage at once is more optimal.

[Syrell Trudell]

So this was brought up in a discussion I was having and I ran some quick simulated numbers on it and I thought it would be worth sharing.

I didn't use a lot of data points but I built a few quick stat lines for fighters at lv 1 6 and 11 assuming an 18 starting strength, a great sword, and what weapon runes based on treasure by level were appropriate to made comparisons against the AC's of monsters of equal (standard solo) and 4+ (solo boss) to make my evaluations.

The rules of thumb that my rough numbers generated are Power attack has higher average damage If:

You only have 2 actions to attack with and your chance to hit on your first attack ~=<40%. This situation can occur hard solo challenges with high AC, or debilitation effects.

You have 3 actions to attack with and your chance to hit on your first attack ~=<70% making 1 standard attack followed by a power attack is advantageous. This situation can occur in encounters of lower difficulties.

It is certainly not an all the time thing but depending on your weapons die, when/how you improve your weapon, your modifiers, and your targets AC Power attack can have regular combat applications outside of resistances specifically.